All you need to make your own laundry soap is a bar of Fels Naftha soap, Washing Soda, and Borax - I found all of these item at the local (and hated) WalMart. In fact, they were all neatly lined up on the same shelf next to that high dollar stuff. As I marched down the extra-scented aisle of various bottles of chemical soup I wondered just who among my fellow shoppers were willing to go to jail for stealing something they could make for pretty much all the change they had in their car or in their couch cushions.

I did my last laundry soap post in May last year but I had been using home made soap since about January. That's when I first bought all the ingredients. It wasn't until last week that I needed to buy more Washing Soda and Borax. You read that right - two of the three ingredients lasted over a year!!!! Sure I need to buy a bar of Fels for every batch but that cost me exactly $0.97 each time.

Here are the itemized costs from my receipt:

Fels Naptha: $0.97Borax: $3.38Washing Soda $3.38

Total: $7.73

But wait - don't say, "Wow! That's a lot!" Because... that's for all the ingredients and aside from the Fels.... that lasted me a year! I usually had to make a new batch every other month... so my real costs for doing all our laundry for over a year was about $12.58. At our local store a big jug of Tide costs over $17.

So nope, I'm not going back to store brand laundry soap. And next time I get lazy I'll just read this post and remind myself that the $4 I'm spending at the Dollar Store for a jug of detergent just isn't worth it.

Got a bucket? Got $8? Then run right down and get the fixin's to make your own laundry soap and save yourself about a million bucks!